AN EXAMINATION OF THE EFFICIENCY OF SINGLE VS. MULTIPLE COMMON BOND CREDIT UNIONS

As of 1982, federal credit unions were allowed to add select employee groups and thus create institutions with multiple-group common bonds. We examine the efficiency of single bond and multiple bond federal-chartered credit unions by using data envelopment analysis (DEA), a non-parametric, linear programming methodology. Results indicate that multiple bond credit unions have better pure technical efficiency than single bond credit unions. However, single bond credit unions appear to be more scale efficient than the multiple bond credit unions. Our results also indicate that members of multiple bond credit unions may derive greater wealth gains than members of single bond credit unions.